The 1983 movie Brainstorm
is worth seeing, or maybe revisiting if you last saw it decades ago. It
fits in with Tron,
WarGames, and
Videodrome
as early 80s imaginings of what the near-future of technology
will look like. Great performances by Christopher Walken and
Louise
Fletcher.

The reason to watch Brainstorm now is is the production design,
the imagination of consumer products and user interfaces for the near
future. It feels like totally relevant, modern commentary on product
design for things like the iPhone, Google Glass, Tesla, or a Microsoft
Kinect. Dialed up to 11 with a sci-fi flight of fancy, of course, but
well done for that. I’ll be honest and say the plot is
sort of silly, a combination of military-industrial complex paranoia and
some fairly hokey spiritualism. That’s partly redeemed by Louise
Fletcher’s role as the head of the research project, a totally
badass lady scientist. But mostly watch it for the animation sequences
and the industrial design.